Open-E launches in the US

Posted on January 24, 2008

—Although it has being doing business in the US for some time, Open-E GmbH this week launched the Open-E Inc. subsidiary in the US, with offices in Redwood City, CA, and Boston, and is in the process of adding VARs in the US. The Germany-based company makes NAS and iSCSI software and competes with pure-play software vendors such as FalconStor, Microsoft, and Wasabi, as well as with iSCSI/NAS vendors such as EMC, LeftHand Networks, Network Appliance, and others.

Open-E is hoping to capitalize on the growing NAS and iSCSI markets. For example, International Data Corp. (IDC) predicts a 75.8% increase in iSCSI revenue between 2005 and 2010. IDC also predicts that iSCSI revenue will top $5 billion, or 20% of the external disk storage market, in 2010—up from $305 million, or 3% of the external disk market, in 2005.

Open-E, which sells primarily through the channel, claims to have more than 8,000 customers for its Data Storage Server (DSS) software products, about 70% of which are in Europe (with 40% in Germany), 20% in the US, and 10% in other regions, according to Krzysztof Franek, Open-E's president and CEO. Sales are split at about 85% to the channel (VARs and distributors) and 15% to OEMs and direct to end users. OEMs include vendors such as Digi-Data and Rorke Data.